We Head to the United Kingdom

After finally finding the wonderful dessert we were looking for, we had a good night’s sleep and in the morning we were off to the airport for our flight from Dublin to London’s Heathrow airport. In the morning, we caught a taxi from the hotel to the airport and were treated to a typically Irish cab driver. I don’t remember his name but he was very nice and talked to us practically the whole way to the airport.

Once we got there it was a simple matter to check in and then we were waiting for our British Airways flight to London. This day was the only day of rain that we had the entire trip but it did cause a bit of delay in our flight leaving. Once we did get on the flight it was uneventful, just the way you’d like a flight to be.

Once we arrived in London, we met a driver that we had hired to drive us to Dover to meet the ship. It is about an hour and a half to two hour drive from London to Dover and since we didn’t want to rent a car (and learn how to drive on the left for one day) we hired a car service to drive us. We figured this was easier than trying to haul all of our luggage on a bus or train. Another reason we wanted our own car was so we could schedule a side stop. This stop would be at the second of our possible six Hard Rock Cafés. This was no ordinary Hard Rock. This was the Hard Rock Café London, the first Hard Rock Café. Here’s what we saw when we got there:

Across the street from the Café was the Rock Shop, where we were able to pick up our shot glass and pin. And outside that was a typical sight of London, a red phone booth:

Our driver was able to find a parking spot right on the street around the corner. We were in and out in 15 minutes and back in the car and on our way to Dover. It rained most of the way down there and I would be lying if I said that we didn’t doze off a couple of times. One other thing that I wanted to mention about the drive down comes from the “Things are the same everywhere” file. On the drive to Dover, our driver had a talk radio station on and there was a wonderful debate on the “unique” problem that they were having in the UK. Should they give immunity to illegal immigrants living in the UK? I told the driver that you could pick that debate up and put it on any radio station in the US and it would be exactly the same argument.

So, after our drive, we checked into the Best Western Dover Marina Hotel right on the waterfront. After we got settled in our room, we went back down to the desk to ask about places for dinner. Now you will notice on this food blog, there hasn’t been much discussion of food for the day. That’s because we had been sustaining ourselves on some trail mix and almonds we had stashed in our carry on bags and some drinks from the airport. Now we needed dinner. The desk clerk gave us some ideas and we decided to walk below the underpass and into the city centre for dinner. We walked up and down a bit and checked out a couple of places.

We settled on this little casual place called illy. Now I had seen the illy logo before and they are known for their coffee over here in the US. In the UK they have a line of casual restaurants and here’s the one in Dover:

After perusing the menu, I settled on an English Beef Roast dinner. It was roast beef served with vegetables, potatoes and a Yorkshire pudding. Again, like most “puddings” on this trip, Yorkshire pudding is not what we Americans would call pudding. Yorkshire pudding is more of a batter pudding made with meat drippings that resembles a biscuit. Here’s my plate with the Yorkshire pudding right in the front:

Joan ended up getting a chicken and mushroom pie with a salad and chips (or French fries). Here’s what she got:

After we finished our dinner, we needed some dessert. They had a couple of options there at illy, however we had another plan. While we were walking around the streets of Dover, my wonderful wife Joan had a very keen eye. We were just checking out the dinner menu at a place called Blakes of Dover when she spotted the dessert menu and saw…. Sticky Toffee Pudding.

So we headed back around the corner and found this place again:

We headed in and ordered our Sticky Toffee Pudding that was served with custard again. This time, we decided to order only one and split it. Here’s what we got:

I can’t say it was better than the one we got at Bruxelle’s in Dublin but it was close. The custard itself was maybe a bit better in Dublin, but we thought the cake was a bit better here. In all, neither one was a mistake to order. If I was in either place again I would get them again in a heartbeat.

Blakes of Dover was a small place like many we had been in, with a small bar in the basement. This was just like going to someone’s rec room in their basement to have a drink. While we were using the restroom before we left, I struck up a conversation with the couple people that were at the bar. They were obviously “regulars” and were very nice. One even had their dog with them and anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a dog person.

After we left, we took a walk around Dover and caught a glimpse of the White Cliffs of Dover. I’ll get to more of that in the next post. We headed back to the hotel and began preparing for our cruise on the Carnival Legend.

Next time, we depart Dover and get our first dinner on the ship.

Until next time,

Mike